Locsin to remove birth certificate requirement for passport renewals

MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. is poised to issue an order that would remove birth certificate requirement for passport renewals.

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, the country’s top diplomat also said: “Old passport is m(o)re than sufficient.”

Signing order removing birth certificate requirement for passport renewals. Old passport is mire than sufficient.

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) January 15, 2019

Locsin, in another tweet, said he would have the text of the order, which “I’ve been dying to give to resolve a more blockage is passport processing system,” prepared in an hour. As of this posting, however, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has yet to make public such an order from Locsin.

In one hour, I will have the text of the order I've been dying to give to resolve a more blockage in passport processing system. Love my DFA boys; they are like hot knife cutting through buttery bureaucracy. There is so much young talent that just needs a chance to show.

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) January 15, 2019

The impending issuance of the order came after Locsin earlier disclosed that a formerly outsourced passport-maker of DFA “took all” passport applicants’ data following termination of its contract.

READ: Passport maker ‘took all data’ when contract terminated, reveals DFA chief

Locsin was responding to a tweet by DFA Assistant Secretary Elmer Cato, where he reminded applicants who plan to renew their brown or green passports or maroon machine-readable passports (MRP) “to submit birth certificates because we need to capture and store the document in our database as we no longer have the physical copy of the document submitted when they first applied.” /kga